Product Red
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Because when people see Product Red written somewhere, they Google it, and it's not like they're going "ah, yes, AIDS. It's still a thing isn't it?"
It's just a vehicle to drive sales. Because the only effect it has is suckers that really care about AIDS giving more money to Product Red.
> "Product Red has been criticized for not having an effect proportional to the advertising investment, for being much less efficient than direct charitable contribution, and for having a lack of transparency"
I'll bite - Why is this a problem?
Let's assume (Red) is using funds properly (not going to touch that). If selling products that carve out a portion of profits get donated then isn't this great?
> Because the only effect it has is suckers that really care about AIDS giving more money to Product Red.
If more money is going to the right causes why the holier-than-art-thou thought process. It was the same criticism with the ice bucket challenge. "people don't care about ALS..." "nor about <fit your cause here>".
It gets more money into good causes. If <said thing> didn't exist, they'd have less money.
The "Criticisms" portion of the article has one response to this sort of argument. Most of Red's aid is in the form of purchasing pharmaceutical treatments for those who need it. It sounds good in the short term, but it's essentially a private subsidy to the pharmaceutical companies and an excuse to keep drug prices high and not bother with government pricing regulations or government funded treatment programs. The argument is that the money could be better spent on lobbying for government aid and price limits.
By whose judgement?
If someone comes to me and asks for money for their medical treatment, of course I'm going to give them it. They need it now, I'm going to help. Or are we going to argue that this money that I spent would have been better off donated to an organisation that lobbies government for regulating medicine prices(while the person who needs help now suffers because they aren't getting the meds).
It just strikes me as such armchair judgement of the situation(not you personally, I mean the general criticism around this).
So it's better for lobbyists to get the money to encourage pharma companies to increase US prices to give Africa free doses? I don't see how that is a better use of the money. Now you've spent twice as much money on this. Once for lobbyists and then again from US price increases and pharma companies make just as much in the end.
At least in this case there's pretty clearly money flowing to the cause rather than just teenagers doing teenager stuff on social media with added warm fuzzies.
Guess I am one of those. I bought a Red iPhone 8 a few years ago for the following reasons:
1. I had to get a phone for my new job.
2. I liked the colour.
3. It was the same price as non-Red models.
4. It happened to send a few dollars towards a good cause which would not have been sent if I had bought the regular colour product.
I'm apparently a sucker who would rather give a little than nothing at all.
I doubt the money does anything to help anyone, even if it is actually donated.
If you want but a single data point Apple yesterday highlighted a woman who got tested through a Red-funded clinic, and because she was tested early, she could also be treated and give birth to a HIV-free baby.
A multi-year untreated infection would have been a death sentence still in the mid-1990s, but today we can routinely treat these cases to a level where the virus is undetectable.
Something that people also tend to forget is that there was a strong HIV-AIDS denialist movement. In the 1990s a lot of regular people and also some scientists were convinced that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, despite accumulating evidence to the contrary. Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis was involved in this conspiracy-minded movement. The president of South Africa was also convinced, which caused thousands of unnecessary deaths in the country where HIV spread like wildfire at the time.
When somebody tries to argue that Covid-19 or climate change are fake based on the views of a single doctor or other scientist, I point at Kary Mullis.
The HIV-AIDS denialists even had a magazine, but it ceased publication in 2001 when all the editors had died of AIDS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_(magazine)
1 they manage to collaborate with big names like Apple that create products in demand, 2 they make sure the color is not ugly, 3 they make sure you don't pay more.
If not for product red Y-bar may not have donated to HIV/AIDS cause at all. Same for me, I always buy product red if device is available because why not, I don't care about the color much.
I think prev post is saying: /some/ people making a trivial individual choice to produce /some/ cumulative benefit is preferable to /zero/ people making that same trivial choice to produce /zero/ cumulative benefit.
Made me wonder if they are in some way still obligated to do so or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Fund_to_Fight_AIDS,...
As I patiently await that day I continue supporting charities because the alternative is worse.
The fact that instances of fraud have been noted is positive. The only charities with no instances of fraud are those that are either not looking or actively covering it up.
Mark Fisher - Capitalist Realism
I don't understand why buy a fancy device only to wrap it in an ugly plastic.
If you don’t subscribe to that notion, then it makes perfect sense to protect something that you paid $1200 for for the utilitarian value despite it making it look worse.
Even a thin case will greatly reduce the maximum force a phone will experience when dropped. Metal edged phones are great for flare, but terrible for drop absorbtion.
A soft barrier between the phone and the ground increase the time between initial velocity and end velocity; reducing acceleration. Therefore, reducing the maximum force the phone receives.
The idea wasn't bad, I don't get how they choose their products. Maybe this is a kind of green-washing for those companies (for social matter instead of environment).
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple decides their exact annual contribution to (RED) not just per device sold, but based on how much revenue they need to transfer to US. It's not even cynical, it would be good accounting practice to report the revenue of Product(RED) before anything else, as you can get a tax-deduction for your "charitable expenses", while the rest of your revenue stays off-shore until a new opportunity comes along.
You basically get the social aspect for free...